


Collective Morning Rituals

by orphan_account



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shop, Collection: Zombies Write, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-23
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-16 21:24:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eugene falls into a morning routine more easily than he ever thought he might. [the coffeeshop!au]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collective Morning Rituals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ancalime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ancalime/gifts).



Eugene has his reservations regarding Sam Yao’s Theory of Regulars, but he keeps them to himself for the sake of first impressions. With his internship coming to an abrupt close due to a government shenanigan he isn’t legally encouraged to even think about, he needs this job more than he needs to express skepticism to his shift manager.

“You just know,” is the theory as Sam puts it. “Even if it’s their first time here, your first time seeing them. You know when someone’s going to be a regular.”

Logically, his theory has the consistency of swiss cheese and comes out of nowhere after a visit from Sam’s favorite regular. Of course, as Eugene quickly discovers, logic has little bearing on anything that goes on in Sam Yao’s pre-noon mind.

But _logic_ doesn’t stop Jack Holden from introducing himself like a new old friend, ordering six coffees, and leaving with a comically elaborate tower of drinks.

It doesn’t stop Eugene from saying, “See you tomorrow.”

“See what I mean?” Sam says from behind his own register.

Eugene rings himself up for a parfait and says, still somewhat noncommittally, “I think so.”

 

And he thinks right. Jack returns the very next day, this time with a physical list of the drinks he’s been sent to get.

“The caffè mocha was supposed to be iced, the iced tea was supposed to be a hot tea latte, and the hot chocolate--well, I was told there wasn’t supposed to be a hot chocolate,” Jack says as Eugene rings him up with instructions from the list rather than from half-remembered orders. “ _Or_ they’re just messing with me.”

Eugene hands over the receipt to be signed. “They seem like the type?”

“They’re the _worst_ ,” Jack says with an especially grim nod.

Eugene hums before hazarding a guess of, “Lawyers?”

Jack shakes his head, his expression still as grim as any Eugene’s ever seen. “Close. Abel Elementary kindergarten teachers.”

They both laugh and Eugene says, again and a fair bit more committally now, “See you tomorrow,” as Jack sidles away to wait on his order.

 

Eugene is tempted to think of these sub-minute conversations with Jack as something which becomes easier and easier, but they never was very difficult to begin with.

Jack hums along to the songs playing at just audible levels over the sound system and samples the scones placed out on the counter, occasionally motivated by them to buy a dozen mini-muffins to go along with the drinks. He talks at great length about the demon spawn he has to work with each day as a student teacher in a way which suggests he doesn’t mind their demonic qualities very much at all. (Though on the bad days, when his threats of violence sound especially genuine, Eugene signals Janine to make his hot chocolate with an extra shot of chocolate just to ensure the continued safety of those schoolyard brats.)

And he listens when Eugene answers questions about the daily brew, the potential future availability of onion-raisin bagels (the potential of which is _none_ ), and his career aspirations (journalism).

“Journalism?” Jack repeats. “I know a guys in journalism. I can try to hook you up!”

Eugene doubts that, but he smiles nonetheless and begins to look forward to Jack the same way Sam looks forward to Alice’s visits. He even nods along as Sam tells their newest recruit about the Theory of Regulars.

“There’s always that one morning person that just feels right,” Sam says as he delivers his newest, most improved speech on the matter to a mostly attentive audience.

Eugene, when called upon for input, agrees without hesitation.

 

The clockwork of their mornings is disrupted on a Tuesday by one Maxine Myers.

Over the past month of his employment, Eugene had become accustomed to a number of things. He expected the espresso machine to malfunction at least twice before noon. He expected to see the daily brew written up on the board behind him in Jody’s extravagantly elegant cursive. He expected Sam to punch in Alice’s order and himself to punch in Jack’s.

And in his periphery, he expects to see the ever-smiling Maxine Myers come in after her morning run to chat Janine up over at the order pick-up station.

Eugene doesn’t expect her to appear in front of him, very much not in his periphery, red-eyed and sniffling as she looks up at their drinks boards like she isn’t quite sure where she is.

She eventually orders, and before Eugene can decide whether it’d be appropriate to ask her if she wanted whipped cream on that, Janine barrels in without warning and ushers her friend away to a free table in the back.

By the time Eugene thinks to call for the next patron, the line is clear and Sam is totalling Jack up at his register (with the both of them looking rather bewildered by the entire ordeal). The complete derailing of the day’s routine is off-putting enough that Eugene feels suddenly compelled to organize teas.

“Weird day,” Sam says after their lunchtime rush. “Right?”

Eugene considers disagreeing. It was hardly reasonable that such a small shift in routine could disrupt an entire morning for the entire staff, but hardly reasonable seemed to translate to _probable_ these days. Mutely, Eugene nods.

 

The next day, things feel more or less normal.

Janine takes the day off and Jody isn’t quite as competent in the drinks-making department, causing a bit of a backlog in the waiting area until Sam makes the executive decision to leave his station to help her out. Eugene just barely manages to keep the line for the registers from spilling out the front door on his own, and Jack’s appearance towards the end of the morning rush is a welcome moment of relief--even more so than it typically is.

“How’s Maxine doing?” is his question of the day.

“Better,” Eugene says based on--well, absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

Sam nods at them on his way back to his register. “Trouble with the long distance girlfriend. You know how it is.”

They all nod, then, despite almost definitely _not_ knowing how it is, and the disturbance of the day before is almost instantly accepted into the natural mechanisms of their morning routine. It remains there, this heavy sense of worry, until Maxine comes in several days later, smiling and laughing and her usual self once more. The worry dissipates, then, as though it’d never existed.

 

And none of this abrupt, almost Stepford-esque normalcy strikes Eugene as strange until he takes a day off work to make an interview for an out-of-town paper in New Canton.

Left waiting among a crop of other candidates, he catches himself just barely quelling the temptation to call into work to make sure Sam has put Jack’s order into the system with the right specifications. He finds himself genuinely anxious be waiting another day to hear all about the results of the spelling bee Jack talked about moderating yesterday.

Then, after what he’s fairly certain was a sub-par performance during his interview, Eugene decides to contemplate concern over his latest habits.

His part-time job to tide him over until he found employment actually relevant to his university degree was quickly becoming all-consuming in a way he never meant for it to. His very simple responsibilities of entering orders into a register and smiling nicely at the patrons weren’t ones that should require quite so much thought and emotional investment. He hadn’t become a barista to make friends.

But now that that’s exactly what he’s done, Eugene wonders if he should be concerned.

As the next candidate is called in for their interview, Eugene thinks about just how serious Sam always is about his various theories and hypotheses, that begrudging fondness Janine has towards the ragtag staff of her shop despite their occasional bouts of ineptness when it comes to making drinks with more than two ingredients in them, and the way Jack uses his hands to animate his near-daily complaints of children with purely evil intentions.

He ultimately decides against concern. As far as friends go, he would be hard-pressed to do better.

 

Eugene’s decision is quickly reversed as he becomes _very_ pro-concern at the sight of Jack, sitting ( _dozing_ , it will quickly become apparent) on the sidewalk with a tub of something suspect in his lap. He seems suspiciously unalarmed by his startling similarities to a homeless when he opens his eyes as Eugene clears his throat.

“Hey!” he says, more chipper and excited to be standing at six in the morning than Eugene expected him to be. “I heard you were sick yesterday.”

Still recovering from the unexpected company at opening hours, Eugene only blinks down at the container Jack is now holding out to him.

“So I brought chicken soup?”

Eugene stares for a moment longer before he settles on a laugh to fill the silence as he unlocks the door. “Did Sam tell you that? I wasn’t out sick. Just had a job interview is all.”

When he turns around to let Jack in, he could swear room temperature drops by an entire degree.

“Job interview?” Jack repeats, perhaps out of habit if nothing else.

Eugene nods and takes the soup to bring it behind the counter. “Yeah, in New Canton. Can you flip the sign for me?”

When he looks up at the sound of the door, the sign is unflipped and Jack is gone.

 

The concern lingers. Jack stays gone for the rest of the week.

“What did you do?” Sam asks, whispered and conspiratorial as though the question were in relation to a grand larceny about to be perpetrated.

Eugene might be alarmed if he weren’t almost certain the question was meant to address the issue of Jack. “I’m not sure I did anything.”

“Well, you _must_ have,” Sam says. “He’s _your_ regular.”

The notion sounds rather preposterous to Eugene for a grand total of a single second until he realizes how much sense that inexplicably makes.

 

Jack looks impossibly sullen when he returns on the fourth day. He orders his usual and seems to be trying to ignore it when Eugene takes his break early to come wait with him for the drinks to be made.

Eugene, after the whirring of the blenders stop, goes for directness: “I’m sorry.”

Jack develops a sudden interest in a spot on the ceiling. “For what?”

“For--not being sick?”

While Jack makes a series of indignant sounds and frowns quite severely at him, Jody calls his order hesitantly. Before Eugene can guess again, Jack is picking up the drinks and escaping. He resigns himself to another day of this new uncomfortably clumsy morning routine that has set in since Jack’s disappearing act.

Then he un-resigns himself, because the mystery is just ridiculous.

Jack is already halfway down the street by the time he gets outside, and he doesn’t stop even when Eugene calls, “Hey! Jack, hang on.”

Fortunately, with six drinks in his arms, he isn’t tough to catch up with.

“What am I supposed to be sorry for?” Eugene asks once he’s positioned himself as an effective roadblock.

Jack feigns confusion once he gives up on moving past him. “Nothing! Why should you be sorry for anything?”

Eugene opens his mouth to say he’s obviously done _something_ to anger Jack and throw the entire framework of their collective morning routine into an abyss of awkwardness, but he finds himself interrupted.

“I mean,” Jack continues, “why _should_ you be sorry for committing premeditated murder on this great thing we’ve got going, huh? We’re just _temporary_. You’ve got to find a _real_ job.”

Eugene opens his mouth again, then closes it, and repeats the process over the course of the next time minutes before settling on open and, “This is about the _interview_?”

“Of course it’s about the interview!” Jack pauses to rebalance the drinks when the two stacked on top of the others begin to wobble. “I’m just so--.”

Jack stops. Eugene waits. Ultimately, Jack sighs and the uncharacteristic tension in his shoulders eases away into something more depressing.

“I’m going to miss talking to you when you get that new job.”

Eugene doesn’t bother telling him he didn’t get the job, something he would’ve been able to say days ago if Jack hadn’t gone missing. He bypasses arguing that point entirely for confusion, saying simply, “Did you think we wouldn’t talk anymore?”

Jack, to his credit, does pause for thought, but when he says, “Yes,” it still sounds like _duh_.

Eugene shakes his head. “Why wouldn’t we talk anymore? We’re friends.”

“We’re _what_?”

The force of his surprise is thoroughly surprising to Eugene. “We’re not?”

As though it were a particularly difficult question, Jack furrows his brow and thinks on it for a much longer pause before he says, “ _Oh_. Oh, we are.”

Again, as they’re always prone to do, they both laugh before Eugene says, “See you tomorrow.”

 

Eugene does eventually find work relevant to his career track and Jack’s co-workers do, some time after that, finally stop sending him on their coffee runs, but neither of them fail to make a point of visiting the shop every morning for a hot chocolate or a parfait. It doesn’t take them long to develop a routine of ordering for each other and having pre-work breakfasts together while, just in sight from their new usual table, Sam continues his attempts to work up the courage to say more than a few words to Alice at a time.

The morning routine still changes once in a while, startling everyone involved when it does, but it never takes long to settle back down into something reassuringly familiar.


End file.
